I've gotten the rest of my computer so quiet at this point my 2 7200 RPM HDD are the loudest thing in my case. I run an SSD for boot, a 2tb Seagate for steam, and a 3tb Seagate as a media/dump drive. It's that 3tb drive that's the loudest. I've poked around here and it seems that WD green drive is the way to go. Just how much slower will the 5400 RPM drive be? It will play lets say 4k video without an issue right? What about ISOs of video games in emulators? I ripped a lot of PS2 games to store on the 3tb drive for emulation.

Heres a pic of how my drives are set up in my case

While I know this is not the best way to mount drives in my case with my stuff its about the only way to do it. They are bolted in using some of them rubber anti vibration grommet and screw. Any kind of foam or something I can use to also help silent down the drives.

Maybe a tad longer loading times with a 5400RPM drive, but nothing dramatic. 4k video without an issue, yes.

Consider WD Red, they are a bit more expensive than the Greens, but have longer warranty.

I thought the red drives where for raid? I thought the green was as quiet as WD makes?

Both Green and Red are 5400RPM hard drives so they will be about equally quiet as long as you're comparing hard drives with the same number of platters. The only difference between Green and Red is slightly longer warranty on Red and firmware optimizations on Red making it more suitable for hardware RAID.

In general hard drive quietness (if there is such a word) is primarily a function of 1) how it's mounted, 2) hard drive RPM, and 3) the number of platters. Everything else is secondary. Hard mounted hard drives will always be lounder than soft mounted ones because hard drive vibrations will be amplified by the case. A 7200RPM hard drive is always going to be louder than 5400RPM. A drive with 4 platters is going to be louder than the a similar drive with only one platter.

The easiest and cheapest thing you can do to reduce the noise is to decouple your hard drives from your case. I you cannot do that then the next best thing you can do is to swap your two hard drives for a single high capacity 5400/5900RPM drive such as WD Red/Green or Seagate ST4000DM000. A 5400/5900 drive is going to be plenty fast for everything you do and it's going to be significantly quiter. I would probably recommend getting two hard drives though and keep one in an external case for backups.

I had a single WD Red 2 TB mounted in elastic suspension, but once everything else in my system was really silenced (I'm down to three 14cm Noctua fans at 5v in a Define XL R2) the drive started to annoy me with its noise. I swapped it out for one of the Samsung F4s that I had been using for backup, and it's a little better--probably down to individual sample variation at this point. The hum that I used to get from drives hard-mounted to a case wasn't an issue, but I could hear a slight, turbulent wooshing coming from the WD Red (and, to a lesser extent, the Samsung).

I've started shopping for 1TB 5400rpm 2.5" drives in hopes that I can eliminate perceptible HDD sound, as terrabyte SSDs are still too expensive and the 512GB 840 pro I use for a system drive isn't adequate for media storage.

Ok heres take 2 on hard drives. Its a little messy but it seems to work. I put sound dampening foam from Silverstone on the top of one of the drives to keep em from hitting one another as they are very very close. I have it in the case now and while its quieter this way then the other way its still not as silent as I like, Im gonna take more of this foam and wrap the cage with it. Think that will help?

So after some thought I think I'm going to take the cage out and use "Aphonos' Dual HDD Bungee-cord Suspension" method but run the cord from the top to bottom of the case with just putting a knot in the cord to keep the drives up high. What do you guys think?

Ok heres take 2 on hard drives. Its a little messy but it seems to work. I put sound dampening foam from Silverstone on the top of one of the drives to keep em from hitting one another as they are very very close. I have it in the case now and while its quieter this way then the other way its still not as silent as I like, Im gonna take more of this foam and wrap the cage with it. Think that will help?

So after some thought I think I'm going to take the cage out and use "Aphonos' Dual HDD Bungee-cord Suspension" method but run the cord from the top to bottom of the case with just putting a knot in the cord to keep the drives up high. What do you guys think?

Nice job!

When you touch the 5.25" cage, you shouldn't be able to feel any vibration; only the drives themselves should be vibrating.

Some acoustic foam on the insides of the 5.25" faceplates/blanking covers should help a bit, as well as some lining the interior of that 5.25" cage.

Also make sure that the SATA cables are left suspended in mid-air and not touching any part of the case where possible. Ideally, the data cables should only be touching the hard drive and the motherboard port. The power cables only touching the hard drive. If necessary, use silicone grommets or blu-tack to keep the cables from touching the case.

Yeah, feel no vibration at all and it is quieter then before. Got version two rolling around in my head and as soon as I get around to getting that set up ill give this thread an update. Also plan on wrapping the cage its self in that foam to see if I cant take the noise down another notch or two.

Be careful not to block airflow to the hard drives though, otherwise the temps might climb too high. If after all of that you're still not satisfied with the noise, then you'll probably have to buy "green" drives to replace your 7200 spinners.

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